Spaceman #4

"Circus Dead" (4 of 9)
written by Brian Azzarello
art by Eduardo Risso

Although it's not exactly surprising, given his easy rapport with the friendly, drug-peddling children in his dockside slum, Orson's most reliable conspirators in keeping the kidnapped (then rescued by Orson) celebrity orphan Tara safe are those same kids.  They are seemingly the most reliable and honest people in Orson's life and, it turns out, Tara's as well.

The adults of Spaceman—the socially distant residents of Orson's neighborhood, the sheik and his goons who kidnapped Tara, the pirates who re-kidnapped her and manufacture new ways to exploit her prolonged disappearance with another kid after her rescue, her beautiful but difficult-to-read and sometimes short-tempered reality-show adoptive parents, their reality show directors and managers, the seemingly competent but brusque cops on her case, and Orson's internet sex appointment and her pimp—are, to a man, self-serving.  If their motivations are genuine, it's impossible to detect with any certainty.  It's no wonder that Tara takes so quickly to Orson, whose protective instincts must seem foreign.

Orson is stigmatized by his "Spaceman" origins, though as of yet, the precise details about why are unclear to the reader.  He is ostracized by human adults, and whether its because children are better judges of character or whether its because these kids are just too young to remember the Spaceman controversies, they're the only ones who will socialize with him outside the most minimal (if polite) of necessary interactions.  The sex professional hired by Orson didn't know he was a Spaceman, and when she finds out, she freaks out.  Orson must eat alone, at a table by himself.  Until now, the implied boundary between human and Spaceman was less well-defined, but "Circus Dead" makes it a major thematic point.  In his Mars episode, Orson and the other Spacemen must decide their priorities and confront their purpose.  Are they, as Spender insists, designed only to help mankind?  Can they pursue their own financial interests, as Carter and, it seems, Orson want?  Or are they, as Ottershaw concludes, part of mankind themselves?

[April 2012]